The success of your company lies with your employees. By working as a team your business can reach great heights and make a measurable impact in your industry. As a business owner it is not only important to hire the right talent, but you must facilitate collaboration across your team.
Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”
“Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”
One surefire way to keep the teamwork continuing and progressing throughout your organization is with CRM Software that is not just focused on managing customer relationships, but also managing employee relationships.
These all-in-one CRM platforms not only help you better manage your entire business, but also keep teams, divisions and remote offices working together for success. Here is how you can position your business to benefit from better collaboration.
1. Improved Communication
Your all-in-one CRM gives your employees, partners and customers one hub for all your ongoing communications to take place. By consolidating all conversations, your team is able to clearly discuss their needs with one another, refer to past conversations as a point of reference and not waste time discussing the same issues or topics already addressed.
By having all communication on record within the same platform, employees are able to spend less time sifting through email to find a conversation and more time achieving goals and solving problems.
Actionable advice:
- Use CRM based email so all correspondence is kept in a central visible location to enable quicker customer response times.
- Encourage compliance to ensure all employee communication occurs through the CRM
- Add an agenda item to team meetings to discuss whether topics are being effectively communicated within the CRM
2. Transparent Accountability
Teamwork is achieved through complete transparency on how each individual plans to contribute to the overall team. An all-in-one CRM achieves this by offering clear visibility on each member’s role on a project or group of projects. With less time spent repeating project details and bickering over the ownership of each part, more time will be spent on executing on each person’s strengths and interests.
With an all-in-one CRM, the communication surrounding an entire project is visible for everyone within the company. This makes it much easier to identify any problem areas or a department or person that is excelling. Reward the true champions at your company and work with others to understand how problems can be resolved.
Actionable advice:
- Conduct quarterly audits to identify growth opportunities and problem areas. These are made easy with clear visibility of what team members work on what areas of the business
- Setup the command structure per project from the beginning, using the CRM to communicate this and ensure everyone involved with the project is on the same page
- Encourage transparency throughout all areas of the company by acknowledging the success of visible accountability. Highlight the employee benefits of knowing what campaigns are working and which aren’t
3. Clarified Team Goals
When employees share similar goals, they are more likely to succeed due to the dedication of joint manpower and resources. If employees work in silos on their own with individual goals they are less likely to benefit the business as a whole. Individual goals are far less likely to have a tangible impact if they’re not supported by other goals within the company.
Using a CRM can help spur collaboration by clearly showing how the goals of the organization, department and individuals tie together. This will assist in identifying what needs to occur in order to achieve those key milestones. If your sales, project, operations, finance, support and management teams are all synched; they are far more likely to succeed in achieving the overall business goals.
Actionable advice:
- Set three, six and twelve month goals in your CRM for each department and for the organization as whole to outline the company’s trajectory
- Attach attainable goals to each customer with a robust execution plan. Reassess these benchmarks during and after the completion of a client engagement. Analyze the outcomes for future projects
- Link each aspect of client projects with your organizational goals to act as a constant reminder to remain within the right scope of the project. Set alerts and triggers when goals are met or if the project is creeping away from the original parameters of the engagement
Using WORKetc CRM to bring your teams together in the Cloud
- Integrate your email accounts, install the Outlook Addon or the Gmail CRM Widget to ensure all (important!) customer emails are captured against a contact record.
- Encourage compliance between your team by book-marking each employee’s Activity History. Then simply review each employee’s history, keeping an eye out for poor-quality communication with your customers.
- Use the Team Discussion Tool and place the meeting agenda as the first item. Then, simply attach that discussion to a project, sales lead, support case or simply a client to keep a permanent record of everyone’s ideas and issues.
- Encourage transparency by including sales people as observers on a project or support people as contributors on key customer accounts..
How does your company support teamwork among employees? Has your CRM been helpful in making the work culture collaborative? Share any insights or tips on encouraging teamwork in the comments below!
COMMENTS
A great article Brian. So often CRM implementations fail because teams just don;t ‘buy in’ to using the tools provided.
WORKetc offers excellent tools for communicating between team members (internal and external) and of course…Customers!
Thanks John! Buy-in is critical for the success of any tool, especially CRM. We really appreciate the kind words. 😀
having a cloud based CRM that puts together sales, projects and customer support is awesome!
Couldn’t agree more! 😉
We usually think on CRM to be a tool to communicate with clients, I never thought that it also could be useful for internal communication. Its a very nice idea.. I like this guy!! Brian Honigman
Thanks Arturo! You’re great too. A CRM can really be a powerful asset for both internal and external collaboration.
CRM’s have traditionally been processed based and not user friendly, Worketc, really makes a massive leap forward in addressing “I actually want to use this software” The internal collaboration is massively important as email, is quite frankly useless when you are back and forward on team issues. We are just migrating to this in Worketc, from another solution. The key thing is that it needs to be VERY accessible, and have push notifications, otherwise people just don’t use it. We all need to be reminded. IMHO, worketc should have a separate discussions App that is simple, slick and fast with push notifications. Now that would truly be awesome!
Cheers,
Rick
Rick, we’re thrilled that you decided to make the switch to WorkETC and can’t wait to continue to deliver world class service. Thank you for reading and for the product recommendation. I’ll be sure to pass that info along.
Good article and finally a product that supports the current employment model were employees (full-time + flex) are all contributing to the success of the organisation.
Thanks for reading Henk!
This is exactly what we are in our communication agency last year. We see every day the benefits of our management. WORKetc clearly helps us to carry out our projects.
It’s really great to see that you’re seeing these benefits have a measurable impact on your business!
We’ve discovered WorkETC to be a great asset to not only keep our clients and their data organized, but also our internal workflow as a whole. It’s become such an integral part of our business’s productivity!
So happy to hear that Christina! Thanks for the kind words. Let me know if there’s ever anything you need help with.
We’ve been using WorkETC for over 2 years now and have found it invaluable to our team of 20 programmers, designers and marketers.
Wow Alan, that’s amazing! I really appreciate your dedication to the company. Can’t express how much it means to have you as a loyal customer.
I am looking forward to learning more ways that Work(etc) can help us improve our services.
Awesome Joshua, there’s certainly more great content to come!
Great article! WorkETC has definitely helped with these areas.
Thanks Allen, very happy to hear it!
Brian brings solid advice to the table. The above is true for any team effort which is trying to utilize internet based tools, but WorkETC really brings an advantage in delivering unified package. It is helping us streamline our processes and deliver a better service faster to our clients.
Thank you for reading Jusso! Happy to hear you also find WorkETC useful for providing better service to your clients.
True that!
😀
Very good read. Work ETC is definitely improving collaboration
Thanks Jon, much appreciated.
this blog was right on! We love the Work etc. CRM system for keeping us organized and efficient as an offsite team!
Thanks VRM Staff, we appreciate the kind words!
great post – we have been using worketc as a team for 10 months and it has improved how we track and bill for each team members time and managing project workflow
Thanks for the kind words and I’m very happy to hear WorkETC has been so helpful for your business.
great post,..very informative and educational, love it 🙂
Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to read the article.
Great read. We’ve enjoyed how WORKetc has helped keep track of project discussions and tasks
Happy to hear it Domenico! Thank you for reading.
As always, very helpful, keep up the good work!
Thanks Scott, we appreciate the support.
Great seeing the feedback from people on this one. Of course, we try to do all this ourselves, with our own tools too – and that means the product development is based on real experience of the product.
Fantastic article, great points and wonderful suggestions! We have been using Work[etc] for our internal communication instead of just our external communication and it’s been helping so much! It helps to keep us all more accountable and it’s wonderful to be able to have the discussions in an area that will be captured in one area. Great way to look back on decisions and processes that were decided on down the road.
Thanks for reading Deanna! Looking back on past discussion can be extremely helpful, couldn’t agree more.
Thanks for some great ideas on how to increase out team goals when using WORKetc. With staff across NZ, who are often travelling and on the go, it is great to have everyone records of where they are at with our clients as so I can easily co-ordinate my contact around them. Love the Outlook addon too!
Happy to hear it Jacqui! Please continue to provide feedback so we can continue to improve the way you’re managing a team.
At this point it’s just me and my assistant and we encourage each
other on a daily basis. I’m new to WorkETC but I think, what am I
saying, I know this system is going to keep things in line and organized
between me and my assistant. I’m thinking of hiring new contractors in
2014 and having this system all setup and running will definitely be a
Godsend for us.
Good point Mieke. Good luck to you in the New Year organizing your company.
All you need is work[ETC]!
😀
We have struggled historically with our CRM tools in this manner. We continue to challenge ourselves and discuss internally how we can better use our WorkCenter for CRM purposes but with our large number of projects and small number of customers, it can be a little overwhelming at times. Our model is simple and sometimes trying to do too much in CRM can make it more complicated than need be, although the discipline would be a good improvement.
I agree Robert, simplicity is often the key to success with the organization and use of your CRM. Best of luck to you in the New Year.
You hit the nail on the head Brian. I love having a cloud-based solution for everything I need to successfully run the operations of my business…contacts, leads, projects, support, quoting, invoicing, expense tracking, product cataloging, etc, etc. worketc.
Information can get lost with so many folks from our company in disparate corners of the world, and that’s no good, particularly during the holiday season when people are even less on their game than the rest of the year! Having project and client information in the cloud is particularly helpful in filling in some of those gaps, especially as people spread out even further (ie – leaving the office on holiday) during the holiday season!
We used to search 3 or 4 different applications to gather certain data. WORKetc allows us to access it all from a single place. If it’s not already on the screen it is a click away. Improved communication both within our team and with our clients is what has spear headed our efficiency improvement. WORKetc has a lot to do with that.
WORK[etc] is fantastic for managing customer information. Instead of having separate applications for timesheets, billing, support, and project management, we now have access to all of this in one easy to use program. It is easier to manage one account, and the reports can be cross referenced. Customer information can be compiled into one place and is easily accessible and shared as needed.
This all in one attittude has been at the forefront of streamlining our boutique engineering firm since it’s inception. Engineers are not salesman but man we love to setup protocols to make things run smoothly! Work Etc. allows us to apply this logic to our entire business structure and all in one place – we started out using each indvidual function on it’s own and quickly grew into designing sales processes basedon project type, developing efficient workflows for our staff and managing long term projects without loss of information. Whether a small quick project or a 5 year major capital expenditure – Work Etc. allows us to collaborate in real time accross our organization and to grow easily.
Iin the field or the office – or in Japan – it doesn’t matter we’re always connected!
The new generation of constantly improving cloud software – an era in which WE is a thought leader – creates an environment of constant improvement, increasing value and, most importantly, accountability to the customer!
Thank you WE for making our lives easier and our time more valuable!
Great read! Although our company is very small at this point, the tools that WORKetc make available to us, make life easier and business more productive!
having your team trained on one platform is super helpful as well, this really makes sales staff and project staff all understand how the process works. Even better, those contractors may convert to staff and having them trained on the single tool (even if in a slightly different role) can save a lot of on boarding time.
Work Etc. has helped me bridge the telecommuting gap and made our team stronger and more efficient. From billing more hours because we are organized and nothing gets lost in the process, to simplified project management. Work Etc. has it all!
When a customer calls us we check instantly all previous conversations, emails, comments, etc. stored on Work etc, this turns the conversation to be much more fluid and productive, and what is best, each customer feels special because we remember them!! empathy and customer experience turns to be a business factor!
Very good tips; so good that I plan to share with our extended team. Thanks
We use WorkETC to track all correspondence with our students. The sudents use the support portal to see their test scores and correspond with their instructors (our WE employees). We look forward to more automation features.
Agree completely! Bringing everyone together in a company on the same platform enables transparency, openness, and collaboration.
Working in an environment for so long where pretty much all communication was within email, having a centralized platform has been amazing.
Nice article
Love the product, keep it up.
We use Work[Etc] to manage our timesheets and support cases. Task times are really easily tied to projects and it helps us with quotes for future work. I have used many CRMs but this is clearly the best.. our business processes have improved significantly since we adopted W[E].
Very useful! We also changed from 3 programs for CRM, Time-sheets and billing to 1 web service; WE. Can’t say i’m disappointed.
The secret to online team work starts with availability. You then arrive at communication techniques. Next in line is a structured approach. Then you need a tool to pull it all together and make communicating as productive as possible. WORK [etc] does that. Task, Projects, Review, Discussions, Email… All in one place. Magnificent.
Before we used worketc we were good/decent/at least we thought at service and follow up. Currently one year has passed, and we would be lost without the tools.
We are excited about the time management, the reports that show the results of our time management and the ease that a new employee can pick up where an old employee left off.
It doesn’t think for you, however, it allows you to think ahead and take care of the clients that helped you get there to the point where you need a worketc.
Thank you and looking forward to utilizing more of worketc for the next years ahead.